The Role of Advertisements in JUUL Consumption: Analyzing the Connections between Different Stimuli on Advertisements and Teenage Vaping

Abstract

In the last three years, JUUL Company has gained popularity through the media because of its party-themed advertisements and subsequently, its rise in teen vape consumption. While other studies have researched the increase of vaping in the previous years, this paper will draw connections between different stimuli on the JUUL advertisements and its effects on teenage vaping. In order to examine these connections, the author conducted a study to further analyze particular advertising practices used by the JUUL Company to attract the younger generations to their product; specifically, the study has two components that gather quantitative and qualitative data. For the first element of the study, the author created a survey that tests the effectiveness of different stimuli on the advertisements and distributed it to participants ranging from thirty-three years old to eighteen years old. The resulting age gap allowed the author to gather information from subjects with different life experiences and maturity. The findings of this section concluded that the participants within the ages of eighteen and twenty-two are influenced by their involvement in a social media echo-chamber; therefore, the younger generations do not even recognize their association with the echo-chamber but continue to fall into trend cycles since the trends, such as vaping, consume their internet feed. Overall, both adults and teens were able to acknowledge the strong presence of ‘Juuling’ in their communities and the majority labeled the JUUL posters as “party-like”. In the second element of the study, the author conducted group experiments with high school students ranging from fourteen years old to eighteen years of age. The findings of this section proved herd mentality and psychological reactance as the participants began to copy each other’s behavior and became attracted to the advertisements that were presented as ‘unattainable’. This study validates the effectiveness of the stimuli on advertisements when analyzing its connections to teenage vaping. Therefore, as a future solution, corporate lobbying in government for JUUL must be further restricted and minimal so teenagers will not be as exposed to JUUL’s marketing and in return, there will be a decrease in death rates caused by vaping.